Travis County Commissioners Court
July 26, 2005
Citizens Communication
Charles williams is number one and bob barstow. This gives residents an opportunity to address the Commissioners court on any item not on the agenda for up to a full three minutes. Good morning.
>> good morning. Good morning, judge Biscoe, charles williams. I知 here with jim whipper from lcra and brian block of keep Austin beautiful and here we're talking about and very excited to talk about the Lake Travis parks annual cleanup, it's our 20th. We've been going and going and this has been the biggest and best we've ever had. This time we had over 420 volunteers. We had 2.3 tons of trash picked up. We had over 100 pounds of aluminum. We had lunch for all the volunteers. Then we had door prizes. We had a party and everybody enjoyed themselves. And with that I want to pass this on to lcra and keep Austin beautiful and let them talk about our other partners and I知 going to pass out some t-shirts.
>> I知 jim woford with lcra and I want to thank you for allowing us to be here this morning. This is the first time i've talked to the court, but accord nature the event on the lcra's behalf and -- [inaudible] this is our 20th year and we had a lot of fun designing that logo. We've actually only been doing the cleanup with Travis County for about 10 years when we started partnering with keep Austin beautiful about five years ago and it's really been a great partnership having all the partners together. And like charles said, it's one of our biggest events and most successful we've ever had with that number of participants, over 400 participants. And just wanted to again say thank you again this morning for your support and we appreciate it.
>> and my name is brian block. I知 the executive director for keep Austin beautiful. We're the non-profit partner of the group and one of our key roles in addition to helping to coordinate the event is leverage resources. And we did that by recruiting volunteers. We had nearly 1,000 hours of volunteer service committed to the Travis County parks surrounding this event. We also recruited sponsors, tourney, collie and braden and kxan to help promote the event and recruit volunteers. And we also got in-kind contributions from waste haulers and commercial recyclers. So I would also just like to thank you for your support and for your commitment to keeping Travis County clean and beautiful.
>> thank you all. Thank the hundreds of volunteers also. This is the 8th annual --
>> this is the 20th, sir. And we've been with lcra for the last 10 years and keep Austin beautiful joined us about five years ago. So this was a very big excitement and we really wanted to pump up the 20th anniversary. And it worked great. Like I said, we had the biggest turnout we've ever had and it was just a big party. Everybody enjoyed themselves.
>> good job. Now, the members of the court would have been there, but we had other very important county business keeping us busy.
>> of course, sir. We knew you were there in spirit.
>> mr. Barstow is next.
>> good morning, judge.
>> good morning.
>> Commissioners. Lawyers. And concerned citizens. We have an ongoing situation. I知 bob barstow, by the way. The barstow family owns windy point park, it's the only privately owned public park in Travis County. And we have the misfortune of being next door to you and owning your park and owning an easement to go through it which allows us to go without paying your fee, allows us to drive to the entire waterfront from our park and return, and once they are there, to get in the water for unrestricted use of the water. We have safety issues. And here is the picture, and i've sent it to each of you in a letter. You've seen it, you had a meeting on it last Friday. And I understand that the meeting ended but you are not going to remove these rocks. As you can see, they are pretty good-sized rocks. Boulders. And they stick up from the lakebed. And the lake is down. It's down 9 feet when this picture was taken. About the 672 level. The lake has been up at 681 most of the area. To date. So if the lake comes up again and it rains, and we never know when that's going to happen, these rocks are going to be submerged. When they are submerged, they are not visible. And when they are not visible, they don't mean anything to boats. They are unnatural hazards. And if a boat runs into them, they can sink, they can create a jolt that knocks people overboard, they can bend propellers. It's not a safe situation. In addition, the rocks alone, we've experienced this for years, do not keep people from getting in the water where boats are going in and out. And it's a problem for your management. It's a land use problem first and a water management problem second. The water management sudden supplement your land management. You have an additional problem in resolving this because we own an easement right to each anywhere by automobile so you've not only got to solve the safety problem of this thing, which i've been working on, but you've got to have a means of separating people here so that we can get through with our automobiles to reach anyplace at the water's edge. I didn't lease a right from the lcra to stop us from doing that. You leased a right from the lcra to honor our right and work around our right to drive to anyplace at the water's edge. So we have those two issues when we look at the safety. The safety issue is the issue that I really want to stress, but you've got to take care of my rights too to drive to anyplace at the water's edge. A serious flaw in what you leased from the lcra. It's unfortunate that you didn't run a title check and you got caught in this situation. I don't know how to resolve it. The resolution is we ought to be one park actually instead of two competing. We need one manager of access. Now, the best you might be able to do under these circumstances is to draw a line between water's edge and the 681 elevation and say boats stay on one side of this line. People stay on the other. At least that won't put holes in boats and bend propellers. But remove these rocks. They are dangerous. And I think there are a number of people out there, I hope, who will recognize the danger and let you know about it because you seem to respond only to groups that are organized to tell you what they want you to hear. That's all I知 going to say this morning. I understand there's a hearing on this next week, judge, and in the meantime, I hope the citizens let you know how dangerous they think these rocks are so you can consider that at your hearing.
>> thank you, mr. Barstow. Anybody else for citizens communication whether you signed in or not?
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Wednesday, July 27, 2005 7:49 AM